Allison Stanger

I would recommend this class to people who are really interested in political history—it's definitely not a casual or approachable class. While it is a PSCI class, it is very history heavy and a background in European political history would be helpful because the readings are long and tend to be complicated. The response papers (2-3 pages) due for every class make the workload relatively high but are pretty necessary for actually getting a handle on what the readings are saying. The longer papers have great and very thought provoking prompts and I think that this class will stick with me for a long time. The one downside that really bothered me is that Prof. Stanger's lectures/dicussion facilitation is very freewheeling and not very structured and so I'm not sure how much classes really helped me process the material. Sometimes she would go over much-needed history timelines in class and get distracted on some random tangent and just not finish her thoughts. Her grading is also pretty difficult and she does not give out many As. Overall, though, I really enjoyed this class and it's one of the most valuable I've taken at Middlebury. Genuinely intellectually challenging.

I would recommend this class to people who are really interested in political history—it's definitely not a casual or approachable class. While it is a PSCI class, it is very history heavy and a background in European political history would be helpful because the readings are long and tend to be complicated. The response papers (2-3 …Read more

I think the class is definitely hard and challenging in a way that it requires a lot of time to read, think, and write, since Stanger requires one reaction paper for every lecture. But it is also rewarding since you would learn a lot from her and other people in the class.

This was the first Political Science course I've taken. The first month or two were really challenging without a PSCI background, because the readings are long and high-level political science theory (but not unfair to ask of a 400 level senior seminar). The entire second half of the class, we had no class meetings or required readings, and had a ton of freedom to work on research projects. I would recommend this class to any students interested in the subject who want to work on research independently, even without a political science background.

This was the first Political Science course I've taken. The first month or two were really challenging without a PSCI background, because the readings are long and high-level political science theory (but not unfair to ask of a 400 level senior seminar). The entire second half of the class, we had no class meetings or required readin …Read more